At least 45 civilians, many women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province last week, a spokesman for the Afghan government said on Monday.

The incident happened in Helmand’s Sangin district on Friday when civilians crammed into a mud-built house to flee fighting between NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops and Taliban insurgents, Siyamak Herawi told Reuters.

“The investigation shows that the rocket was fired by NATO and 45 civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed,” he said.

Reports of civilian deaths and casualties caused by foreign troops are a major cause of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers and have led to street protests.

Maybe if all these people dye their hair blonde and rename themselves Jon Bonet the American people will start to notice. And let’s remember- wikileaks is the real problem. Not our policies.

As an thought experiment, I wonder where the bad news threshold is for President Obama?

Where is that intersection of points: troubling economic news; bad shit from Af & Pak; various administrative inadequacies; etc. when the dynamic moves to establishing significant momentum against his presidency across most groups of voters?

Wikileaks is the bomb. Just ask them and they’ll tell you themselves. They love to disparage the “war criminals” formerly known as our troops. They are saying themselves how this will totally change how we feel about the War & the US will be forced to leave. No hidden agenda here, just want transparency in all govts. He’s been giving intvs. in England all morning. Nothing like a good troop bashing from Wikileaks to complete my day!

Leaking documents is one thing. Bashing US troops is another. US policy is not for Wikileaks to decide. Old fashioned I know, but he has no right to disparage our troops.

So, can we progressives call Obama out on his Afghanistan strategy? Or is that too right-wingish and too poutrageish?

I mean, can we ask in stark and simplistic terms: WHY THE FUCK ARE WE STILL THERE? WHY ARE WE NOT GETTING THE FUCK OUT?
WHAT ARE WE HOPING FOR?

Are we allowed to ask if it is a political calculation to extend this war past some, oh I don’t know, some Presidential election coming up in 2012 so that maybe a current Indonesian Muslim Terrarist President doesn’t look weak?

To borrow from a recent Glenn Beck tirade: WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? WHY ARE WE NOT OUT IN THE STREETS? OUR REPUBLIC IS DEAD!

Seriously, what is wrong with us? Why are we not out in the streets? Our Republic is dead.

@cat48: Cat48, I agree. I don’t see anything that “bashes” any troops – in fact it made me realize conditions are much worse for them than I had imagined, and I had imagined they were pretty bad. What I think these papers do, and rightly, is call into question our whole Afghan adventure.

For one thing, it’s purely a publicity stunt and all about him. Sorry if I don’t find the publicity whore qualified to label the troops as war criminals.

He’s much braver than our troops and is under much greater danger. Just ask him if you miss his bogus tweets about the dangers he endures just so he can leak anything he can get an idiot PFC to leak to him. Funny, he never mentions poor PFC Manning, the guy in the Brig, soon to be on trial.

@cat48:
Afghan and Iraqi insurgents are routinely labeled as terrorists even though some of them might just be resisting the US occupation. They have had their country invaded, their families killed and their occupations destroyed. They have effectively become refugees in their own country. None of this seems to register with the American public. But all the US troops are somehow on this god given mission to bring freedom to all. They are just not humans anymore and don’t seem to make any mistakes. They JUST.CAN’T.BE.DISPARAGED.

I don’t think the leaked papers are that much of a problem either. If you read and follow the war in several places, you sorta knew most of what I’ve had a chance to read so far.

However, Assange from Wikileaks has been interviewing all day in England and it hasn’t been pretty. He’s playing Judge and jury for the troops and I just don’t see he’s qualified for that. My only gripe!

I didn’t say they were on a “God mission” or whatever you’re implying.

I said they were doing their jobs everyday. Sorry, the Congress and the President decided to use military force in Afghanistan. They voted on a resolution in Congress after we were attacked. The troops are doing their job as soldiers and I’m supposed to disrespect them for that??

Of course he has the right to disparage them, just as you have the right to disagree. Soldiers aren’t some holy sanctified beings exempt from all criticism or calumny, and free speech includes speech you disagree with.

He’s playing Judge and jury for the troops and I just don’t see he’s qualified for that.

He’s not qualifed to have an opinion of his own? Why? What would qualify him? And what about me — I keep up with the news, read the papers, am an American citizen who votes in elections — am I qualified? What if I said I loved the troops and they never did anything wrong, not ever — would I be qualified to give that opinion, or is there some mysterious process that still disqualifies me?

Because most Americans would know that, shy of slander or libel, everyone has the right to say whatever they fucking please about anyone else. The constitution does not contain any clause prohibiting the disparagement of DA TROOOOOPS or anyone else.

In short, take your bullshit about what wikileaks has a “right” to say and shove it up your ass, you proto-fascist. You could maybe spend a little time reading up on what rights we actually possess as Americans, jackass.

Leaking documents is one thing. Bashing US troops is another. US policy is not for Wikileaks to decide. Old fashioned I know, but he has no right to disparage our troops.

If you are old enough to be old fashioned, you lived through Daniel Ellsberg, Dan Schorr and a previous debate about the public’s right to know. Although I voted for him and will again (thus far), when it comes to being the CEO of America At War Inc. I do not trust Obama any more than I trusted the chimp. You shouldn’t either, if you really care about our troops.

If you aren’t old enough, get the fuck off my lawn and be quiet – and use teh google to learn something.

Soldiers aren’t some holy sanctified beings exempt from all criticism or calumny

And anybody that thinks that they are has never served in the military.

I think Americans are smart enough that to know that there are assholes in every walk of life … It’s just that in the military then have an extra special ability to fuck things up. Sweeping them under the rug and keeping shit quiet doesn’t fix anything.

@cat48: I hadn’t seen anything about the interviews; I was just going by the pretty lengthy piece I read in the newspaper this morning, which detailed some of the things the troops have been going through.

At least 45 civilians, many women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province last week, a spokesman for the Afghan government said on Monday.

Well, if they were killed in battle, then they weren’t citizens; they were terrorists. They should have their bodies buried in Gitmo, but only after being waterboarded first.

@Bulworth:
He wants us to be declared as liberators, that’s why. Can everyone pool in their change to get some flowers delivered to Weigel? Please have the note say “To, LIBERATOR, Thanks for everything, Love Ya, Afghanistan, XOXO” in bold.

So, can we progressives call Obama out on his Afghanistan strategy? Or is that too right-wingish and too poutrageish?

I mean, can we ask in stark and simplistic terms: WHY THE FUCK ARE WE STILL THERE? WHY ARE WE NOT GETTING THE FUCK OUT?
WHAT ARE WE HOPING FOR?

Are we allowed to ask if it is a political calculation to extend this war past some, oh I don’t know, some Presidential election coming up in 2012 so that maybe a current Indonesian Muslim Terrarist President doesn’t look weak?

Obama is a warmongering thug in the business of his own reelection. He couldn’t call for a drawdown in both theaters to get elected, and he can’t risk drawing down too early now that he’s President lest he run the risk of a mass-casualty attack in this country before 2012. Lucky for him, Faisal Shahzad can’t do what illiterate Afghans who don’t even know what electricity is can do, detonate a car bomb. Here’s to two and a half more years of good luck everybody!

On the plus side, the Greatest and Most Brilliant Strategy Review Session in the History of Ever came up with such great policies to tide us through. Look how spectacularly our Kandahar operation has gone. Wait, what, you mean we haven’t done it? Are you saying the centerpiece operation of this tour of duty has been deemed destabilizing? That Kandaharis want us to go the fuck away? Nobody could have predicted.

But at least our policies are low casualty ones. COIN doesn’t result in a lot of needless ISAF deaths does it? It’s not like American deaths have hit new highs in our decade of war there recently or anything? Looks at death counts…oh.

Well, at least our Communicator-in-Chief is able to hold the coalition together in these divisive times, right? It’s not like any of our NATO allies have had THEIR governments overthrown because of their complicity in this war? Oh, three of them have, you say? Well, it’s only Europe.

But surely the Taliban must be weakened SOMEWHAT through all of this, right? We must be winning somewhere. It couldn’t possibly be that our main tactic is to just bribe the ISI and local Taliban leaders to not shoot and explode us so much, right? They’d never pocket that money and not change behavior, would they? We clearly just need to spend more money, that’s it.

I need not even mention bad Afghani governance, or ceding control of lethal SpecOps missions in Pakistan to the CIA and private contractors, or the general ethics of drone strikes, or the complete incapacity of the Afghans to fund their own police and military units, even if they were ever proven to be competent (which they won’t). So yeah, good stuff. Keep up the good work everybody, we’re just six months away from glory.

Why do we have to continually relearn those old lessons. Certainly the draft was a factor making that period of time unsavory. It was almost understandable when “our guys” did bad shit like Zippo raids. They were striking out in anyway they could.

When our modern full time professional military acts out badly in our name, I am very perplexed and saddened.

@Bob Loblaw: While I think it’s acceptable for you to criticize Obama on some issues, I would only suggest that you find a way to do it by framing it from the left and using progressive talking points.
By repeating the right wing talking points you really aren’t helping the people of Afghanistan die any slower.

When our modern full time professional military acts out badly in our name, I am very perplexed and saddened.

Why? It’s not that confusing, and it’s more rage-inducing than ‘sad’.

We pump these kids up with hate and rage, put them in a place that requires delicate intuitive decision-making skills, arm them to the teeth, command them from remote camps and…hope they make the right decisions. It literally couldn’t be more predictable. And we do it again and again.

But, of course, they hate us for our freedoms. And we shouldn’t disparage our glorious troops because. Freedom, that’s why.

Inevitably, when they don’t do the right thing — and it doesn’t matter if “we” do it right 90% or even 98% of the time, it only takes a few incidents — it gets buried or mystified by people trying to cover their asses, the people get killed and angry either way and we end up here.

Tens of thousands dead. More. Less. Who gives a fuck? Trillions blown. Who gives a fuck? We have to stay on. These next six months will turn the tide.

Who gives a fuck? Not our government. Not our people. No one, except the wogs we’re killing for some reason that may or may not have to do with anything.

@roshan: Naw,, even Fleabaggers need a thread of their own sometimes, so have at it, maybe CS can be your spiritual guide. Someone will be around later to drive a stake through this sucker and bury it in the idjit thread graveyard with all the others like it.

We pump these kids up with hate and rage, put them in a place that requires delicate intuitive decision-making skills, arm them to the teeth, command them from remote camps and…hope they make the right decisions. It literally couldn’t be more predictable. And we do it again and again.
__
But, of course, they hate us for our freedoms. And we shouldn’t disparage our glorious troops because. Freedom, that’s why.

Actually, you answered your own question — we shouldn’t disparage the actual soldiers/sailors/Marines if possible because they are what we made them. They’re doing the job we created them to do. If we don’t like what they do once they get there, it’s our fault, not theirs. It’s like training your dog to bite visitors and then wondering why people get upset that your dog keeps attacking them.

Not that you were saying this, but I get really sick of the whiners who complain about all of the horrors the troops are committing in all of our names like they have nothing to do with it. We are all responsible for this shit and can’t push it off onto someone else by saying, “Well, I didn’t want them to go there in the first place.” Too fucking bad. We are now responsible for their actions and for putting them in the horrible position that they’re in.

It’s also easy to luv the troops and be four square with everything they do when you get two tax cuts before they were sent to do it. How long would it take the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot to shrink from that luv and four squaredness when issued the appropriate tax hike?

None of what you wrote makes any sense at all. I had no more to do with “making” a Marine than a Frenchman did. I’ll defend them if I feel they merit defense and I’ll “complain about all of the horrors” they commit if they commit them.

You don’t get to pawn off war on me just because you need a defense of the leadership conducting it. If I were making the decisions and putting these people in harm’s way then yes, I’d be complicit in their future actions in a measurable way. But I didn’t and I’m not. I voted for the guy who said he’d get us out of Iraq (not put more unaccountable mercenaries in) and the transparency fan who had a plan for Afghanistan. It’s plain that he doesn’t in any meaningful way — because NO plan will “win” Afghanistan.

I’m not responsible for the actions of a military of which I have no say in, and no connection to. I’m not responsible for a Pentagon who doesn’t ask me how they are going to spend the bulk of my tax money. And since no one took my advice in the first place, I’m sure as hell not responsible for their presence in Afghanistan now.

@Jay B.: He is getting us out of Iraq and his plan now for Afghan is also to withdraw the ground war there. As far as mercenaries used to fight our wars, I agree fully it is a bad thing, and oppose Obama continuing to use them. But otherwise, he is roughly keeping his promise on Iraq, and announced an end date for Afghan.

And what Mnemosyne was referring to had to do with blaming soldiers for the war, not that they, individually shouldn’t be held accountable when they break the laws of war, or ROE. That is separate. And if that doesn’t make sense to you then you an idiot. But we already knew that, didn’t we.

I’m not responsible for the actions of a military of which I have no say in, and no connection to. I’m not responsible for a Pentagon who doesn’t ask me how they are going to spend the bulk of my tax money. And since no one took my advice in the first place, I’m sure as hell not responsible for their presence in Afghanistan now

Two car bombs targeting Shiite pilgrims during a religious festival in the holy city of Karbala killed 25 people on Monday, Iraqi police and hospital officials said. Sunni extremists are suspected.
__
Militants detonated two parked cars filled with explosives about two miles (three kilometers) apart as crowds of pilgrims passed by. Police and medical officials in Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad, said 68 people were injured in the attacks.

He is getting us out of Iraq and his plan now for Afghan is also to withdraw the ground war there.

Right, the U.S. is contracting the Iraq war out while withdrawing our troops. Which may mean something to you, but is ultimately meaningless to Iraqis. Meanwhile, in ‘our’ war, Karzai thinks his troops will be ready to take over in 2014, so we should move out a couple of years after that. No problem. Beyond that, no one in the Administration has even bothered to define what “winning” would be in the first place.

And “withdraw the ground war there”, even if written in English, just isn’t true. We’re in the middle of our escalation and Our Boy Caesar just took over to install his “successful” Surge(tm) counter-insurgency strategy.

In the meantime, we have a runaway and completely unaccountable Spy-Military-Industrial complex that not only costs hundreds of billions and destroys our theoretical “liberties” but also needs war in order to continue to make their money.

And this is particularly idiotic:

And what Mnemosyne was referring to had to do with blaming soldiers for the war, not that they, individually shouldn’t be held accountable when they break the laws of war, or ROE.

Who blames the soldiers for the war? What she plainly said is that we can’t criticize their behavior because we put them there. Maybe you guys will allow critics to hold individuals responsible, but as she wrote we’re all collectively responsible for their war crimes. Which is complete horseshit.

@Jay B.: The US is not contracting the war out in Iraq. There is a status of forces agreement that was signed by Bush that defines what happens there, and mercenaries will not be fighting there, unless the Iraqi’s want them to. Whatever private forces remain other than that will be well armed security guards and the like.

As for Afghan, you are aware that the current surge has a fixed expiration date of next summer when we will start removing ground troops there, and withdraw from a ground war with the Taliban, aren’t you. Most of what is happening now is just a last effort to hand over as best a situation as possible to the Afghans after Bush let it get so fucked up over the past 8 years.

Obama will be able to be some flexible with this withdrawal in Afghan, as troop safety always takes precedence during such a withdrawal. But he is committed to it as with Iraq and too much delay will cost him politically for his upcoming election where the country wants us out of there, or at least not playing whack a mole with the Taliban that just gets our troops blown up by IED’s

However, if our withdrawal from Iraq ignites a regional war there, we could well be back at it in some way. Thar is oil there after all, to make our SUV’s go, and keep soccer moms in gas.

As for Mnemosyne’s comment, I think you have so misread and misconstrued what she meant that my setting you straight will have no effect. If she wants to try later, then she can.

Obama is a war criminal as long as he continues to sign off on these kinds of atrocities. Once is an accident. Twice is negligence. Dozens or hundreds of times murdering dozens of innocent women and children, that’s a war crime.

You’re dealing with a sociopath here. Sociopaths have an empty space where normal people have a conscience and sense of empathy. What she wrote makes perfect sense when you recognize that she’s a sociopath. Mnemosyne’s sole concern is to justify continued suffering and death, because (like all sociopaths) lacking empathy or any sort of human feelings, she finds it exciting and interesting. She undoubtedly finds the Iraq war a thrilling entertainment. She probably DVRs closeups of the corpses of Iraqi children and women off CNN and puts it on a playback loop on her giant-screen TV.

Mnemosyne is like the sociopath who shouts “You have no right to do that!” at a doctor helping an injured person at the scene of a bad car accident. Translation: “You’re interfering with the interesting sounds coming out of that injured guy’s mouth and you’re stopping the fascinating red fluid that pumps in arterial spurts of out of his mouth and his nose and his stomach. I found that entertaining and you had no right to interfere with my entertainment.”

You can’t reason with sociopaths, Jay. You can only identify ’em and warn other people away from ’em.

General Stuck is a fascist fuck. How many posters of THE LEADER do you have on wall you shit?

The greatest threat to this country, all countries in fact, are authoritarians of which General Fuckwit is a prime example. You’d like to put the firebaggers in oven’s wouldn’t you? They dare to besmirch THE LEADER and HIS TROOPS. BURN THEM!!!

General Stuck isn’t the one accusing his critics of being mentally ill.

Actually, he is. General Crackpot Fake Name has repeatedly accused me of being mentally ill. He has claimed “mclaren is off his meds,” he has asserted that I have “butt rabies” (whatever that is), called me “insane,” and so forth.

You might find it interesting to learn that psychiatrists do not classify sociopathy as a mental illness. Check the DSMV-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Volume 4) used by psychiatrists as a standard reference. You’ll discover that sociopaths are not classified as mentally incompetent.

Nobody knows quite what to make of sociopathy. Psychiatrists don’t even have a consistent nomenclature to describe it. Sociopaths are alternately diagnosed with “narcissistic personality disorder” (NPD) and “antisocial personality disorder” (APD).

The sociopath differs markedly from psychotics, for example, in that a psychotic typically suffers from delusions. They hear voices, see demons, and so on. Sociopaths typically never exhibit these symptoms. The sociopath qualifies in all respects as perfectly normal except in tests of personal empathy, conscience, ability to judge other peoples’ feelings, and reaction to extreme stimuli.

Something seems to be different in the sociopath’s mind as compared to the rest of humanity. In many ways they are higher-functioning than ordinarily people, particularly in dangerous situations. They are typically entirely self-centered, lacking in conscience, devoid of remorse, unable to empathize with others, unable to experience love or genuine affection, uninterested in friendships, and devoid of concern for family or acquaintances. The sociopath typically acts and thinks as though he lives in a world of human-shaped machines which have no feelings and have been put there solely for the sociopaths amusement and/or benefit. This can give the sociopath extraordinary advantages over ordinary people for instance, in wartime, where a normal person might find himself paralyzed with fear. Hitler loved WW I and described it as “the happiest time of his life.” Clearly he excelled in a situation that made other people cringe with terror, and he was able to excel in conditions that he found exhilarating, but which most other people found horrifying.

A sociopath who encounters appalling violence often finds it wonderfully entertaining. The sociopath lacks empathy, and so judges most normal human activities like parties or movies or reading novels or debating as boring and a waste of time. The sociopath finds extreme situations stimulating, so he will often engage in risky behavior like mountain climbing or illegal road racing or dangerous drug usage. This can make the sociopath superior at extremely risky or dangerous activities, since situations that would make an ordinary person freeze with terror may merely thrill the sociopath.

What’s particularly interesting about sociopaths is how superb they are at observing and manipulating people. In some respects, as mentioned, sociopaths function better than ordinary people. Lacking normal human emotions, the sociopath has had to go through life by mimicing emotions he doesn’t feel. This requires extraordinarily acute observation to pick up on the subliminal cues from other people that tell him how he is supposed to react. A sociopath at a party who sees a baby fall in a swimming would have the impulse to laugh out loud and walk over to study the baby’s convulsions as it drowns, since this would seem very interesting to the sociopath. But in a situation with other people, the sociopath realizes he has to disguise his true nature and will thus pick up on cues of distress from other people and put on a show of being greatly concerned about the baby. He may even go out of his way to save it from drowning, if there is the prospect of gaining something from this action. Sociopaths often exhibit amazing personal magnetism: one prison psychiatrist wrote that he found himself empathizing with and charmed by a serial killer even as the serial killer described his murders.

Above all, the sociopath is concerned only with manipulating other people for his own personal benefit. As an acute observer, the sociopath can often seem remarkably charming: Ronald Reagan offers an excellent example. Sociopaths can so successfully master the outward appearnce of kindness and charm that they may seem more charming than ordinary people. Indeed, excessive personal charm is often a sign that something is wrong: great charm requires immense amounts of work, and we should ask ourselves “What’s the purpose behind all that charm?”

George W. Bush was well known as “charming” on the campaign trail in 2000, a trait we now know was carefully cultivated to cover up his sociopathy. The true nature of Dubya revealed itself in Texas when, as governor, he ridiculed a prisoner who had desperately begged for clemency before her upcoming execution. Dubya laughed and mocked her, whimpering, “Help me! Save me!” His associates in the governor’s office reportedly roared with laughter as he sneered at her pleas for mercy.

That’s the kind of behavior we find from a sociopath. It’s also the kind of behavior we’ve encountered from General Crackpot Fake Name and Mnemosyne. These two people are not stupid. They’ve intelligent and they have some knowledge of the current political scene. These two people could contribute a lot to this forum. Unfortunately, they both seem compelled to use character assassination and compulsive lies and name-calling in place of logic and facts.

As a result it proves ridiculously easy to demolish the arguments put forward by these two people. A normal person, when soundly trounced in a debate, may regroup to learn some more about the facts or construct better arguments. A normal person will often admit s/he was wrong.

Sociopaths are unable to admit they are wrong and cannot conceive of the prospect that they might have anything to learn. When trounced in a debate, a sociopath typically boils with mindless hate and soon erupts with more name-calling, more insults, more non sequiturs, more character assassination. The sociopath, convinced he is the godlike center of the universe, can never forgive a perceived slight and never forgets the most minimal personal inconvenience. This explains why violent sociopaths kill bystanders for no reason: the sociopath may have experienced a sequence of trivial inconveniences that wouldn’t even register with other people (for example, a coffee machine that fails to deliver cream, a car that honks at him as he crosses the street, a girl on the sidewalk who fails to return his glance) and then when some in small annoyance occurs (as, for instance, if someone fails to hold a door open for him at an elevator), he sociopath may boil over with uncontrollable rage and race to the next floor to shoot the people in the elevator who failed to hold the door open for him. An ordinary person wouldn’t even notice this sequence of annoyances, but to the sociopath, each new perceived insult to his godlike persona makes him more inflamed and more enraged to the point where he may lose control and go berserk.

We observe this kind of pathological behavior in Karl Rove, in Dubya (the entire Bush family, in fact: Richard Nixon admiringly remarked of Barbara Bush, “Now there’s a woman who knows how to hate!”), and in people like Tom DeLay and William Kristol. Sadly, we also observe these kinds of pathologies in Mnemosyne and General Crackpot Fake Name. Even the most trivial contradiction to their claims makes these two blow a gasket and erupt with hysterical insults and envenomed verbal abuse.

Fortunately very few of the general public qualify as true sociopaths. They’re a very scary personality type — entirely human, just different from the rest of us, in ways that in some respect make them higher-functioning, and in other respects render them peculiarly dysfunctional.